As Hokkaido prepares for the beginning of the autumn salmon runs, a lawsuit by an Ainu Indigenous group over traditional fishing rights and the impacts of climate change on stocks are hanging over the annual fishing season.
The unprecedented lawsuit by the Raporo Ainu Nation to claim their traditional Indigenous rights to catch the prized fish comes as estimated salmon stocks hover at around half of what they were just two decades ago, with rapidly warming waters in the Sea of Okhotsk and northern Pacific potentially upending migration patterns.
The suit, which was filed in 2020 against the national and Hokkaido governments, has drawn national and international attention, because, while Japan legally recognized the Ainu people as Indigenous in 2019, it only allows the Ainu to fish for salmon for the purposes of practicing cultural tradition — not for economic reasons.
